History

Lainie was born in a remote mountainside village in southwest Reluir. Once, the village had thrived on crystal mining but after that bounty had dried up, there was little else to gain from the rocky slopes. Unable to feed the whole family, Lainie's parents sent her, the youngest of five children, to stay with relatives at the foot of the mountains. At over a week's travel away, it was more or less a permanent goodbye.

Lainie settled into her new household. Obedient and eager to please, she soon won the regard of her relatives and her two new sisters showed her how to work the fields, bale hay and milk cows. It wasn't an easy life - there was work to do from dawn to dusk, if they were to pay their taxes and still have enough leftover to eat - but she took to it well and, not knowing any other way to live, was content. One by one her sisters got married and Lainie too eventually took the miller's boy as her sweetheart and husband. Together they had a son and, to help care for her and her sisters' new families, Lainie learned some basic healing and midwife skills from the travelling doctor. She became the local go-to for aches and scrapes, and was only happy to be able to help more.

Years passed in mundane peace and then came a disastrous winter. Relentless rain flooded the fields and loosened the mountainside. Overnight, several landslides wiped out half the village and many farmsteads. Lainie and her son, who had been visiting her eldest sister's family on a neighbouring farm, survived; her husband and other sister, who had stayed on their own farm, did not. Devastated but without time to mourn, Lainie and her sister's family consolidated with the remaining villagers. After a few days, a rider from their overseeing lord came to survey the ruined area and promised to bring help - but it never came. Two weeks later, the surviving peasants were almost out of unspoiled food and disease from the dirty water was spreading. Lainie was one of the few who remained healthy enough to travel but she was pleaded not to leave, since she was the only healer there. So she stayed, tended to the ill and waited with everyone else for aid to come.

Truthfully, Lainie was not very skilled as a healer and could not hold the disease at bay. Her nieces succumbed to it and her sister's grief finally drove her to move, no matter what other people said. Leaving her son in her sister and brother-in-law's care, Lainie set off for the nearest village, only to find it abandoned. She pushed further to the next, which to her bafflement and anguish refused to send help. To her further confusion though, they gave her their best horse and told her to hurry straight to a larger town, where there was a proper church, and ask help from there.

She did and, true to the mercy of Atros, the church immediately sent wagons and missionaries to aid. Lainie returned to her village with them and together they salvaged the survivors. In the weeks it had taken for her to find and bring back help, however, both Lainie's son and sister had died.

She kept herself together purely for the sake of her stricken brother-in-law. Taking him back to the town with the missionaries, she begged for work from anywhere she could and eventually they were hired by a wheat farm. Lainie worked hard to scrape stability back into their lives and then, after service one day, asked the church to teach her healing properly. Never again did she want to be so powerless in the face of death. Seeing how haunted she was by her village's demise, the head priest took her aside and quietly explained what had really happened - the lord of their land had deliberately left the devastated villages to die, as they were not profitable enough to save. The surrounding villages had been threatened not to help but the church could move independently, which is why they had sent her here. To make up even a little for this grave wrongdoing, the priest accepted her request to teach her.

Over the next years, Lainie learned not only healing and the word of Atros from the priest, but also of the rampant corruption in the upper class. Her view of Reluir expanded and her resolve firmed: so much suffering was unnecessary and created by the hands of elves, so with her own hands surely she could reverse it. As her skills grew enough to stand on her own, she started to chase every disaster, every epidemic, every injustice she could, and try to make a difference to it. Many times, she didn't succeed or only made the smallest of dents - but her fervent tenacity and compassion gained traction amongst the peasantry, and word of her slowly grew.

Gradually, more remarkable stories of her endeavours emerged. She had run in front a noble's carriage for help and spoken so passionately that she was granted it; she had rallied a village to deny corrupt tax-collectors until the ruling lord was forced to review their accounts; she had single-handedly cut three fields of rye by moonlight so an injured farmer could make his quota; and so on. She became an inspiration, an example and, as she spoke of her ideals and hopes to whoever would listen, an unofficial champion of a future where the peasantry were free.

As the Queen of Reluir seems to unleash more catastrophes upon the land, Lainie and her peasant brethren grow ever more determined in pushing the crown aside for their own future. Slowly but surely, they gain support and momentum among the lower class - enough, perhaps, to make a truly great difference one day.